Porsche History

1948: Porsche's first car, the 356, had a 1086cc 30kW VW engine.

1953: The mid-engined Porsche 550 Spyder. (The actor James Dean was killed in his 550 in 1955.)

1963 356C

1963: 904 GTS road & race car.

1964: Porsche 911, start of a legend.

1969: Mid-engined Porsche/VW 914.

1970 & 1971: Porsche 917s won the Le Mans 24-hour race.

1976: Front-engined Porsche 924.

1977: Front-engined Porsche 928, 4.5-litre V8, at the 1977 Geneva Motor Show.

1981: Porsche showed the Porsche 911 AWD concept car at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

1984: A Porsche 911 AWD won the Paris-Dakar rally.

1982: Front-engined Porsche 944.

1986: Porsche 959 AWDs (with off-road suspension, etc.) finished 1, 2 and 6 (the support car) in the Paris Dakar rally, 2.85-litre, twin-turbo, flat-6, 400+hp, 500Nm. 292 [regular] 959s were built from 1986 to 1988 as a group-B rallying study -- Porsche.

road-going 959

1987: "Production" 959s on sale.

1991: 944 → 968.

1995: Mid-engined Porsche Boxster, 2.5-litre flat-6.

1998

2002: A Porsche SUV(!) - the 4x4 Porsche Cayenne - developed in conjunction with VW (~ the VW Touareg).

2007: Porsche seemed to gain effective control of VW buying 31% of the latter's shares and successfully challenging a German law limiting VW shareholders to voting at most 20%. But, financially, Porsche had bitten off more than it could chew.

2009: Front-engined, 4-door Porsche Panamera went on sale, 4.8-litre V8, RWD or AWD, also a turbo-charged version.

2009, May: VW and Porsche decided to merge. After a hard battle, the VW and Porsche boards agreed to Porsche being absorbed into VW (23/7/'09), VW to take 42% of Porsche AG by the end of 2009 (13/8/'09); then 49.9% (7/12/'09).